The Water Room

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I don’t know.’ Heather had been on her way out, and was irritated by the sergeant’s request to babysit her neighbour. It was bad enough having to dress and do her hair by candlelight, without this. Everyone was so protective of Kallie, as if she would never be able to cope by herself, yet she had managed well enough since Paul had disappeared. ‘There’s water coming in under your back door.’ She pointed at the sodden towels leaking in the gloom of the hall.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do until this lets up.’ Kallie chewed at a fingernail, unsettled by the peculiar atmosphere of the evening, the distant shouts and footfalls, the beams of torchlight in the rain.

  ‘I can’t stay long, Kallie. I’m having dinner with an old friend.’

  ‘I told the sergeant not to bother you,’ Kallie apologized. ‘It’s been a really strange—my God, I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘Follow me, you won’t believe this. Bring the other torch.’ She grabbed Heather’s hand and pulled her in the direction of the bathroom.

  ‘What is it?’ Heather laughed uneasily.

  ‘Look.’ Kallie walked into the room and closed the door behind them. The noise of rushing water was louder than ever. It sounded as if they were sitting on a lock-gate. She reached over and pointed the end of Heather’s torch up toward the wall. ‘It’s some kind of huge quasi-religious mural. The inundation of the world—it’s frightening but utterly beautiful.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Heather’s jaw had fallen open.

  ‘I didn’t have time to take the lower panels off, and it would be a pity to damage it. Look, though, this one’s loose. Give me a hand.’ She began to pull at the corner hardboard panel.

  ‘No,’ screamed Heather. ‘You’ll ruin it!’

  But Kallie had already managed to shift the board around on its single remaining screw to reveal more drowned figures, all with their left arms outstretched, pointing down at the floor of the room.

  ‘They’re pointing to the river underneath,’ said Heather tonelessly.

  ‘It’s got to be valuable, hasn’t it? The ceiling’s covered as well. The thing is a complete piece. I’ve no idea what I’ll find up there.’

  Heather’s face looked waxy and sick in the fierce light beam. ‘A fish-eye view,’ she said. ‘You’ll find a distorted view of the street, and the town, and the horizon of the world. The planet consumed by a prophesied deluge. And at the centre you’ll find the other three houses. The House of Foul Airs. The House of Poisoned Earth. The House of Conflagration.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Why did you have to find it now?’ asked Heather, reaching behind her and locking the bathroom door.

  Bryant had stopped in the middle of the street, images swirling in his head. Rain on the floor below the window. Randall Ayson’s row with his wife—accusations of infidelity on both sides. The old-fashioned raincoat left on the Wiltons’ bed. Kallie said that Jake Avery had struck some kind of a deal with Paul the night they went drinking together. The borrowed map . . . the noise of falling water was inside his head, like being beneath a waterfall, like tinnitus, tearing his thoughts into scraps of nonsense. London, the ‘city of springs and streams’, the turbulent Fleet, the soughing Falcon, the excitable Westbourne, the sluggish Tyburn, all sweeping to the Thames . . .

  ‘What’s the matter?’ May asked. ‘You’re standing there as if you’ve been struck by lightning. Let’s get you out of this before you catch pneumonia.’

  ‘I think my phone’s ringing,’ said Bryant distantly.

  ‘Oh, come here.’ May patted his partner’s overcoat. ‘Why must you have so many pockets? And what are you doing with the unit’s mobile as well as your own? I prefer absentmindedness to kleptomania.’ He dug Bryant’s Nokia out, detached several boiled sweets and flipped it open. ‘Janice? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m out the back now. We’re following Tate’s trail through the rear gardens. I don’t think he intended to be a threat to Kallie. Nobody brings a stool along to their hiding place, as well as a knife. I think he was waiting there because he wanted to watch over the house and protect her. Or rather, he was watching the houses—his stool was turned away.’

  ‘Tate’s protecting the Water Room,’ said Bryant, closing the phone. ‘It’s why he never left the street, always living at the end on the waste ground, always hiding in the gardens. But who would he think it needed protecting from? What’s inside it? No one else knows the location, because we got it from—I’m an idiot . . .’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I don’t listen. Something Jackie Quinten said about her friend’s map,’ Bryant muttered. ‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time. She couldn’t leave the map with me, because, as she put it, “He’ll kill me if he discovers she’s lent it out again.” I wasn’t the first person in the neighbourhood to ask about the map.’

  ‘Call her up.’

  ‘I didn’t keep the number. She’s just in the next street. It’ll only take a minute to go round there.’

  Jackie Quinten was surprised to find two soaked elderly men on her doorstep. ‘Would you like to come in?’ she offered.

  ‘We can’t stop,’ said Bryant, attempting an unsodden smile. ‘Your friend Janet’s husband—who else did he lend his map to?’

  ‘Did I mention that? It was some while ago—the lady at number 6, Heather Allen. The one whose husband left her.’

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘He was a local businessman, so there was quite a bit of gossip about the divorce. He divorced her for someone younger.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Oh, a couple of years ago, at least.’

  ‘You’ve been most helpful.’ Bryant tipped his hat, getting water everywhere. The pair set off from the doorstep.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come in and at least dry your trousers?’ called Mrs Quinten.

  Heather hammered the cold tap of the bath with the heel of her hand. ‘You have to do this,’ she explained. ‘The washers are corroded. If it hadn’t been for the taps, none of this would have happened. She was old, she had no grip in her hands.’

  Kallie tried to understand what was going on, but the pain in her temple sang and soared if she tried to move her head. She had been hit with something from the tool box, possibly the hammer. The tiny brown spiders were pricking across her legs, so presumably she was lying on her side. Her hip felt sore and cold against the parquet. She could taste blood in her mouth.

  ‘She couldn’t turn the tap off, you see. She was frightened it was going to overflow, so she knocked on the wall. When I first moved in I told her, if you ever need me in a hurry, just bang on the wall. So when I heard the knock, I grabbed the raincoat Mark Garrett had left at my place the day before and came over to help.’

  Kallie could see Heather’s back bent over the bath. She couldn’t sort out the different sounds in her head: the water underneath, the flowing tap, the liquid buzz in her ears. Heather rose and pushed up her sleeves.

  ‘She was so old and frail, like a little doll, and she had no idea that she owned the Water House. No idea! Of course, the walls had been painted over years before. The property belonged to her brother, and he wouldn’t sell it as long as she was alive. Suddenly it seemed so simple. Now it’s all got complicated. Come on, you.’

  She pulled Kallie to her feet, then tipped the top half of her body over the bath. Setting a comfortable temperature was not an act of thoughtfulness; she did not want Kallie to be shocked awake by a sudden plunge into cold water.

  This is pleasant, thought Kallie. Just what I need to take away the pain. The warmth enveloped her right arm, then the top of her head and one side of her face. She was slowly tipping, being gently lowered. The buzzing suddenly stopped, and all she could hear was the dull sonar of immersion. Water filled her nose and made her cough, and then began to flood her mouth. The sensation was not disagreeable. I’m going to join the people on the walls, she thought. I’ll ge
t to see what they see. I’ll look out at the world with them from deep beneath the river.

  She felt her head being turned further into the water, so clear and untroubled, the curving white arc of the bath below so close that her face was touching the cool ceramic base. A soft red cloud drifted slowly before her eyes. That’s just my blood, she thought, from the cut on my head, nothing to be alarmed about.

  The water wasn’t deep enough. The hot tap was too slow, and now it had stuck. Heather turned on the cold with her left hand, keeping Kallie’s neck gripped firmly in her right. It was taking too long. She should have been struggling by now. Why was she so relaxed? It wasn’t a normal reaction. Her throat should have closed, she should have been sputtering and fighting for life. It was the worst thing that could happen. She needed the reaction; without it, Kallie wouldn’t gasp and suck water down into her lungs.

  They’re helping me, thought Kallie, the men and women on the walls. They’re all underwater, and look how calmly they’re behaving. The waters rose and drowned them all, but in death they can see everything. They’re pointing to the river below the house. They want to be released of their tied-up lives, filled with rules and manners and pious Christian lessons. They want to be washed away, back into an ancient pagan world, to be free to swim to the wide grey sea. And that’s all I want now, to be taken with them. My life above has ended. All I have to do is breathe gently and follow them.

  ‘Why won’t you fight?’ screamed Heather. But even as she tried to tighten her grip on the neck of the limp, heavy body, she could feel it pulling away from her, back toward the wet floor. She had dreamed of the mural for so long, but now the exposed white faces were unnerving her, judging her. Another few seconds at the most, surely that’s all it can take, she told herself. Then this whole nightmare will be over. Ignoring the blue underwater-wide eyes that stared down on her, she pushed the head in her hands down hard once more.

  Even at this crucial moment, Kallie was aware of the growing sound of water all around her. One of the candles on the floor guttered and fell over, its flame hissing out. Water was gushing from between the bricks in the chimney breast, where she had been striking them with the sledgehammer. One brick began to rattle, thin sheets of water spraying around its edges, until it was extruded from the wall and blasted to the floor.

  The rest of the chimney breast came down easily. Heather was horrified to see that the wall of water extended halfway up the breach. Moments later, the icy torrent hit them both, throwing them against the far wall as the pressure loosened more bricks. All around them, the acolytes of the water room looked down, happy to accept their fate, to be condemned and redeemed beneath the absolving waters of the world.

  47

  * * *

  INTO THE UNDERWORLD

  ‘No answer,’ said May, peering through the brass letterbox. ‘There’s someone home, though.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Bryant tried to hunch in beneath the shallow porch.

  ‘There are lit candles all over the place. You wouldn’t go out and leave them burning, would you?’ He turned his ear to the letterbox and listened. ‘I can hear water.’

  ‘Yes, it’s pouring down the back of my neck right now,’ Bryant complained impatiently.

  ‘No, splashing water, downstairs. My God, what is that noise?’

  ‘The river’s breached the basement. That does it—we have to break the door down.’

  May looked at the front door in some alarm. ‘I don’t know whether I can.’

  ‘The wood’s older than our combined ages, it’ll have a spring-weight in the wall and a single Yale lock holding it shut. Get out of the way.’ Bryant pushed his partner aside and raised his shoe. He would have fallen backwards down the steps if May hadn’t caught him.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, let me. This is a woman’s job.’ Longbright appeared behind them. On the third kick of her steel-tipped boot, the lock popped open. They squeezed into the hall and headed for the stairs, flashing torches to the floor below, and saw water pouring from beneath the door of the bathroom.

  Heather tried to hold herself upright and reach the door as the glaucous Fleet-water swirled and shoved around the room. The level was no higher than her knees, but the floor was now too slippery to gain a foothold.

  The sound of the front door slamming back sounded above her. As she watched Kallie slide from her grasp and become submerged in the breached river, she felt no distress in knowing that her friend would drown. Where better to fill your lungs than here, watched by the watery corpses of those who had faced a similar fate? She stared up at the calmly floating figures revealed on the walls, the pale bodies of drowned acolytes welcoming their ancient gods, and felt suddenly glad to be leaving behind her own distress. The weight rising from her came as an immense relief. Someone else could take over the responsibility now.

  Heather barely noticed the female police sergeant who dragged Kallie free. She didn’t even complain when May threw a bath towel around her shoulders. The burden of the Water House, and its terrible possession of her, had begun to wash from her heart, leaving her pure and free again, an innocent child. She smiled tightly, looking from one old face to the other, knowing that she would tell them nothing, for there was no longer anything left to tell. They would never know what she had been through, and without her testimony there was no proof.

  She was safe at last.

  Longbright laid Kallie’s body on the stairs and squeezed filthy water from her chest, breathing air into her lungs. ‘She’s fine,’ the detective sergeant called up the stairs. ‘She’s swallowed quite a bit, though. She’ll need shots.’

  ‘John, stay here with Janice. Try and get the women dried off and warmed up while they wait for an ambulance. I’ll meet you later.’ Bryant rose and gripped the bannisters, climbing unsteadily over Kallie’s body.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ asked May.

  ‘Tate’s opened the conduit between the canal and the house. That’s why the water is in direct contact with the basement wall, because the river Fleet runs behind it whenever the channel—the Prince of Wales Causeway—is used. He’s changed the path of the water. I’m going after him.’ Bryant didn’t look overly keen on the idea.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said May. ‘You’re not up to it. I’ll go with Bimsley.’ He turned to climb the stairs, but Bryant scurried on ahead.

  ‘Come back! You are absolutely not going down a sewer at your age, with your legs. The very idea!’

  ‘You need me. You can’t predict my mind. You know it never follows logical routes. You’ll be too sensible.’

  ‘Then I’ll just have to compensate for you not being there by thinking rubbish,’ warned May.

  ‘You don’t know where he is, but I have a good idea. Besides, I had the presence of mind to wear my waterproof long johns, which is more than you’re doing. I always said if anything happened to us we’d go down together. If we don’t get Tate tonight, we’ll have nothing. Look at the state of that woman downstairs, look at her eyes—they’ll get a doctor to say she’s unfit to stand trial. Is that what you want? For once in my life I’m not at all cold, and I’m coming with you.’

  Accepting that winning an argument with Bryant was as likely as finding a tobacconist’s shop at the top of Everest, May gave in gracefully, and chased his partner up the stairs. They met Bimsley in the street.

  ‘What about getting Oliver Wilton to help?’ asked May as they headed toward the alley. ‘He knows how the system is routed.’

  ‘Only from above ground,’ said Bryant. ‘He’s a technician. It’s not the same as seeing the world from underneath the street. Besides, the unit couldn’t be responsible for his safety. We know Tate’s down there because he’s just re-routed the water flow. The system can be reconfigured by manipulating valves, but once the channels start to fill the power of the river becomes too great to reach them, and we’re having the heaviest rainfall in thirty years. But I’m betting there’s an overflow route, one that can be
opened by high water pressure.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘An escape route; this level of flooding probably switches the largest channels. The bigger the conduit, the greater the volume of water passing through it, the more pressure it will exert. It’s a track-switching system that only gets fully tested to its maximum level every few decades. Tate used a junction-rod to clear a dry path for himself through the tunnels,’ Bryant explained. ‘He made the necessary changes, then waited for the water level to rise to the point when it would re-route to a high-volume shaft. I think one of its side effects was to put pressure on the basement wall of number 5. He explained the process to me; he even gave me a map, but we couldn’t follow it because of the rain. He wanted me to understand.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he simply tell you what was going on?’ May asked.

  ‘I don’t think he’s capable of explaining the full story to anyone, of why he was there and what has happened to him. How long has he been living on the street? Do you have any idea what that does to a person?’

  The alley was under several inches of water at one end, but the raised area around the grating was virtually dry. The lid had been removed and cast aside. Bryant pointed to the iron rod sticking out of the turntable at the bottom of the shaft. ‘You see?’ he crowed. ‘He’s kept this path free for himself, and now he’s gone down to follow the re-routed channel. We’re going to lose him if we’re not careful.’

  ‘Could you explain what’s going on, sir?’ asked Bimsley, fighting to stay balanced in the shifting mud.

  ‘Later,’ Bryant promised. ‘Help me down.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ Bimsley asked.

  ‘At the moment it’s still passable. The volume can rise at an incredible speed in times of heavy rainfall, but it also runs away fast. There are emergency drains which open to reduce pressure. I’m more worried about what will happen if it stops raining.’